


Maiden Chance

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Multiple Pairings, One Shot Collection, Random Pairing Generator, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-12 16:43:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9080923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: Ten rolls of the die: twenty lives.Ten snippets of time when two people crashed together: in love, in hate, in painful mediocrity. And every roll is a random chance for something else.





	1. Roll One: Wrathful

**Author's Note:**

> **Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Derek Morgan & Ian Doyle**

“Can I help you?” He kept his voice deliberately smooth. _Slimy,_ his mother would have called it. Deliberately antagonistic. He could tell it would have the intended effect. The agent across from him was a hot-head, it was obvious. From the tremor that worked its minute, thready way along his forearms, to the tense set of his jaw, to the thin-lipped stare the man was trying to intimidate him with.

But Ian Doyle wasn’t easily intimidated.

“Do you know who I am?” the agent asked coldly. Ian leaned forward and examined those dark, angry eyes. Saw grief within. Fury. Passionate abhorrence. Oh, this one would kill him if given half a chance.

“Hmm, perhaps,” Ian said, and made a move as if to spread his hands in wonder. The cuffs on the table clacked and groaned, slamming his hands back down to the tabletop. “Ow. Bother.”

A smirk. Almost.

This one _hated_ him.

“Oops,” the agent said, and leaned back in the chair. Feigning relaxation. “Bet you’d love those off, wouldn’t you?”

Ian said nothing.

“You know what I’d like?” the agent kept pushing, something wicked simmering below that dark, smooth countenance. “I’d like to see you on the ground, Ian.” Ian looked to the camera, which looked back blankly. Not a single light blinked. Switched off.

He was truly alone here.

Never mind. He’d been alone before. After _her_.

“I’d like to see you dying in the hands of someone who loves you.” More pushing. This time, there was bitter pain laced in the words, and Ian winced because he knew where this was going. “No… I want you holding someone _you_ love as they die. Are you capable of love? You’re not, are you?”

“Don’t presume to know my heart,” Ian spat, the man working under his skin despite his determination to remain sedate. “I think this interview is over. Where is my son? Why aren’t you looking for him?”

“I think the biggest danger to your son is sitting right here, chained nicely to this table and having a chat with me.” The agent folded his arm, and the smirk was back. Catlike cocky, and Ian knew that smirk. Knew where this man had learned it. “After all, you killed the woman you loved. Branded her, you sick _fuck_ , and killed her. Except, I don’t think you loved her.”

Ian stared. His turn to hate.

How _dare_ he.

“I know you didn’t love her,” the man pushed and pushed, standing up now. Towering over him. Muscle bound and thick skulled. Ian wondered if he’d fucked her. If this was why he was so furious. If he’d lusted after the woman Lauren Reynolds had pretended to be and taken her to his painfully modern apartment, shown off his gym set, his Egyptian cotton sheets. “I know _you_ didn’t, because _we_ did. For who she was, the woman you never knew.”

“If you’re talking about _Prentiss_ —” Ian began, saying her name like another man would talk of a festering sore.

“Damn right I’m talking about Emily!” the man roared, slamming his palms on the table— _crack!_ Ian jumped. He couldn’t help it. And he _despised_ this man for making him twitch. “My friend! Do you know what that is, Ian? A friend? A lover? Anything? My friend, who you _killed_! She died in my arms while I begged her to live! Does that _please_ you?”

_Yes_ , he almost spat. _Yes, I loved it. Loved watching her bleed. I hope it hurt. I hope it hurt you to say goodbye; hope you felt even one iota of what I did when Lauren left me!_

But what he actually said was, “No,” in a slow cowardly mumble, because he did know how to love. So, so much.

He’d loved Lauren, he still loved Declan. Two great loves.

Both gone.

The man whirled, his chair clattering back. Paced in a tight circle, scrubbing his hand over his mouth, and Ian wondered what her blood would have looked like painted on those wide hands.

“We’re going to find your son,” the man said finally, without looking at Ian. “We’re going to find him because he’s innocent, you haven’t tainted him, and he deserves so much more than you. But we’re not doing it for you. We’re doing it for Declan and… for Emily. And you’re going to rot in hell without ever seeing either of them again.”

He turned to stride out.

“Wait,” Ian said, and hated his voice. Hated the weakness more than he hated this man. “I’m… I’m sorry for Lau—for Emily.” Silence. Heavy, thick silence. The shoulders in front of him bowed forward, dragged down by the memory of the scent of a friend.

“No, you’re not,” the agent said finally. “But you will be.”

He left without saying his name, but Ian found it out anyway. Asked his lawyer. And he memorised it, because the man was angry enough that Ian knew he’d never be content with letting Ian rot in jail. A name to be wary of, a man to fear, perhaps.

Two words to add to his list of those he’d wronged.

_Derek Morgan_.


	2. Roll Two: Tranquil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Jennifer Jareau/William LaMontagne**

The summer storm rolled in gently. It was a muted force of nature, tentatively striking rain against the front windows with an apologetic peal of reluctant thunder. It took their power and instead pushed humid, moist air into the stuffy rooms of the darkened house, coating them in heat. JJ had always hated heat. Give her winter and snow and blankets anytime, rather than showering three times a day to try and wash away the sweat that stuck like a second skin.

“You alright?” Will asked, padding into the living room with his shirt off and a wet towel wrapped around his shoulders. JJ curled tighter on the couch and peered at him, cross for no good reason. Another towel in his hands as he repeated the query. She didn’t answer, head thumping with the scurries of rain and the angry, frustrated life inside her kicking along with her mood. “Little one being cranky?”

“I think he likes this weather about as much as I do,” JJ murmured, something irritated inside her chest easing very slightly as Will kneeled in front and slowly drew the soothing wet of the towel down her arms, her throat, her flushed cheeks. “I wonder how the team are…”

“Nope,” Will scolded, tapping her chin with one crooked finger. “You’re having a weekend off. You _promised_. Mind off the team, Jen. They’re doing just fine without you.”

The baby kicked, although JJ wasn’t entirely sure if it was in agreement or whether he was as agitated about her absence from work as she was. Curling her hands over him, she laced her fingers and pulled gently in hope of easing the cramped tantrum. A small foot battered against her palm, drawing a smile. Spence had _hated_ the sensation of the baby kicking, despite his attempts to make it sound exciting. She’d known that look of discontentment on his face.

She’d chuckled about it after, with Emily, when he’d made his excuses and scurried away.

“I just feel _antsy_ ,” she complained, heaving herself up with one hand braced on Will’s shoulder. Antsy, vast, cumbersome. She felt all these things and more, and it was agonising. The stuffy air closed in, the room shrinking. Will was too close, too warm, too _much_ , and she strode to the front windows and yanked them open, shivering despite the heat as a gust of eager wind sent water spraying across her navy blouse. A deep breath of that clean, cool wind, and she felt…

Better.

Arms around her sides, hands resting over hers on the belly that was full of disgruntled baby. Legs sore, head weary, just exhausted without reason; she leaned back against a firm body that held her upright. Held her steady. This thing was new between them, this thing beginning, and they were still learning each other.

The rain slowed. As though, she fancied, Will’s arms had steadied the press of clouds as well as herself. Thunder whispered from far away, and the wind dropped low and stayed low. Quiet.

Two blinks and the front yard turned from windswept wet to a tranquil kind of silent. Grass glinting in the twilight light, yellowed at the edges at the streetlight outside their gate snapped on. The path through the lawn that normally stayed pressed down from her morning trek to the mailbox was upright, a swathe of mint green that swayed as one and was broken only by the paper-black patterns of leaves torn down from the surrounding trees.

JJ took another breath, felt the baby settle. Felt Will relax.

A phone shrieked behind them, and he tensed again. _Ignore it_ , she knew he wanted to whisper, but they were still so new. He wasn’t quite ready to ask that of her yet. One day, though…

The phone kept going. Rattling on the wooden coffee table, overloud in the hushed whispering drip of rainwater outside. And she thought of ignoring it.

But it could be trouble.

She answered it and didn’t quite meet Will’s eyes as she agreed— _volunteered_ , despite Hotch’s firm voice enticing her to ‘stay home, we’ll conference call you as needed’—to going in. Maybe tranquil wasn’t for her. Maybe one day it would be.

But not today.

Will didn’t say a word as she packed her go-bag, kissed him goodbye, and stepped out into the wet-washed evening dark, her feet light on the grass. _Swish swish swish_ as she re-flattened the path to the drive, glancing over her shoulder and seeing him standing in the same window they’d been standing in together. Alone now, one hand on the damp-dark windowsill, and she waved and kept going.

She drove with the window down and didn’t mind the cloying touch of the returning heat.


	3. Roll Three: Fearless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Emily Prentiss & George Foyet**

Emily fucking hated the barely open door. Every one of them had a detail that stuck. A detail that niggled and haunted and coaxed until it was the one thing they almost involuntarily looked for at crime scenes. Most of them kept that little detail close to their chests. They didn’t flaunt the things that frightened them.

Emily knew Reid’s—a half-read book marked with a slip of paper on a bedside stand or tossed aside thoughtlessly on a desk or couch. Had found him standing looking down on this very small detail at enough crime scenes that she knew never to comment on it.

She knew Hotch’s—bloodied spatters painted across walls. His eyes would skim to them and skip away, something dark flickering in their depths. Reid explained it. _Elle_ , he’d murmured, and swallowed hard. She didn’t ask the other’s what theirs was, and she didn’t want to know.

Hers was the barely open door.

And here it was again. Except this time, it was the door between her and Hotch’s family, and she didn’t want to turn it from the ominous ‘barely open’ to the resigned ‘all the way’. Didn’t want to push her shoulder against it and ooze inside, weapon in hand and senses buzzing. Didn’t want to see what was inside.

But fear had never stopped her before, and it didn’t stop her now. She narrowed her shoulders, put everything else aside, sent a flyaway prayer to God or Rossi or whoever looked after cocky FBI agents with everything to lose, and walked into the Reaper’s trap. Carpet shifted under her shoes. Muted treading masking soft noises. The gentle _huff_ of air between her gritted teeth, a rustle as her vest caught on her sleeve. The house, as though it understood something awful had happened here, remained silent.

Check each doorway. For the barest second, exposed. She hoped her team was close by every time, because every swing around to clear a new room was a moment where her heart could be stopped. She could find nothing. She could find something. She could find an empty room.

She could find a waiting barrel. A loud _boom_ and then nothing, alright; nothing, except the ghost of Emily Prentiss.

She found Haley. Held her breath as she stepped into the room where the woman Hotch had dared to love lay discarded and knocked the door all the way shut with her heel. She had to check for life: for a breath, a heartbeat, a pulse of blood. Anything to indicate that this wasn’t the end of the man they all admired and a woman who’d deserved so much fucking more than what she’d been given.

There was nothing. No surprise. As soon as Emily crouched with an overloud creak of her knees protesting and tilted back Haley’s head to reveal the wound, she knew there’d be nothing. Hoped there’d be nothing just as much as she hoped to find something, because with this much damage all she could possibly find was a last few gasping, pain-filled breaths.

But Haley was gone, and Jack was still somewhere, hidden in the Reaper’s grasp.

Emily swallowed and stood, back to the closed door. Opened it carefully and moved into the entrance hall. Upstairs now. Feet to the side closest to the wall, back sliding across the wallpaper. Just like Rossi told her to. _Don’t walk in the centre. They’ll creak. Avoid the bottom two and the top—they’re the ones people walk heaviest on._

It might have saved her life. That, or the fact that Emily had never missed a trick, and she didn’t plan on starting now. A flicker of shadow in the crack of a door. A figure waiting for her to reveal herself.

She went low, went fast, and she went in firing high. Too high to hit a terrified four-year old, too wide to hit anyone hiding. But enough to send the person reeling backwards, the knife that slashed towards head-height skipping from suddenly clumsy fingers. Armed. She moved in, stood up, saw the gun.

Foyet rolled, reeling upright, his fingers hooked cruelly on the trigger, and she looked past him and saw bloodied fingerprints on a wooden chest. A boy stared at her as he stood within, arms out and face teary with fear. Red on his cheek. _Jack_.

The gun cracked once and she didn’t say a word. No _FBI stand down_ or _drop the weapon,_ because she knew he wouldn’t. She turned and sprinted, mouth slipping open in a half-choked gasp as a fist punched into the vest over her spine, but she didn’t let it stop her. Just skidded out the room, pressing her foot _hard_ on the top step, and whirling around in time for Foyet to hurtle right into the butt of her gun. His eyes on the stairs, just past her, and he’d never believe a woman would have stayed to fight him.

_Crack_ and he staggered back. Blood on his temple, spooling into cold blue eyes. She kicked, feeling fingers catch and crunch under her heavy boot. But he didn’t let go of the gun.

“Wait—” he coughed, on his knees, and she heard a small voice call out _Daddy?_ “I’m giving up, giving in. Mercy!”

He said this, but he smiled like a blade, and she saw blood on his hands. A bang downstairs as her team made a hard entry, Hotch’s voice roaring. Terrified. He’d seen Haley. Foyet was a dead man as soon as he’d pulled that trigger, she knew. The only uncertainty was who would be his death. If it wasn’t her, it would be Hotch. In cold blood, hot fury, and in front of everyone.

Foyet went to put the gun down. “Mercy,” he said again, as though he expected her to protect him. Her spine throbbed.

She shot him. _Bang_ between those cold eyes, and he fell. A noise behind her. Hotch, on the stairs, his eyes wild as he, and only him, saw her murder an unarmed man.

“Self-defence,” she lied coolly and, “Jack’s in there. _Alive._ ”

Better her than him.


	4. Roll Four: Humdrum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Elle Greenaway/Emily Prentiss**

_I was bored_ , she imagined saying to a room of faceless, judging men. _Stuck in a rut_ , she thought, her fingers knuckling into the tightly wound fabric of the armchair as she fought the urge to buck. A hand on a her hip, nails tapping on the sharp line of her pelvic bone. Urging her down again, urging her calm. _I’d been drinking._

All ways to bear away this moment, put it on someone else’s shoulders. All excuses. Excuses to work away the weight of a head on her thigh, the silky smooth slip of brown hair through her splayed hand as it cradled the back of a delicate skull. All to feign that she didn’t want this; the huff of warm-sweet breath on sweaty skin, her leg hooked up and over the bare shoulder kneeled in front of her, the wicked press of a practised tongue.

“Okay?” the woman murmured, and Emily almost groaned _no_. Almost asked for a do-over, a reset, back to the moment she’d seen a half-familiar face sauntering towards her to slip onto the stool next to her at the bar and order her a drink.

_Emily Prentiss, isn’t it?_ Greenaway had asked, with a casual flick of her hand baring short, unpainted nails. _My replacement. Well, you’ve certainly got the look._

_The look?_ Emily had replied, heart missing two quick beats. She’d looked around for Reid, hidden somewhere at this crowded, humdrum conference. _I know you. Agent Greenaway._

A slip of the tongue.

A slip of fingers, another choking gasp. No regrets, not really.

_Formerly Agent Greenaway,_ the woman had replied with a growly kind of laugh, and downed her drink. _Hotch still a hardass?_

She hadn’t explained ‘the look’. And somehow, somehow, they’d ended up here.

Emily made every excuse except the real one. The one that had taken notice of that spice-brown gaze and sunk straight from her brain to her cunt, spurred along by the smooth burn of the whiskey she’d just swallowed. The one that whispered truthfully, _you wanted this._ Wanted this because it was convenient, because she couldn’t deal with the egos that usually came with a stay-for-the-night cock, because Elle ran her hand along the stubbly bite of legs that Emily couldn’t be fucked shaving after a week-long case in a hotel with shitty pipes and didn’t give a damn because she knew the feeling.

“Yes,” Emily coughed out, husky with the teasing trace of that tongue. The tongue delved, dived. Explored ruthlessly, and Emily squeezed out a groan from deep in her chest that came out crisp and sharp. “ _Yes_.”

Elle smirked. “They don’t talk about this, do they?” she asked, shifting her legs to ease cramped muscles, replacing her tongue with her fingers as she arched back to peer up at Emily’s face. “The stress. The tension. The building strain that nothing but a good turn in the sheets can fuck off.” The muscles in her arm bunched as her wrist turned and shifted, fingers working Emily apart from the inside out. Finding that tension and cording it tighter and tighter until it all unravelled at once.

Emily wondered if she’d unravel with it, if this was a sign of something more. _Sexual promiscuity can be a maladaptive response to stress_ , she heard in Reid’s throaty voice, a little husky, as though he was hovering over her shoulder with his dinner-plate eyes wide and interested, studying her reactions to the unexplainable. She turned and checked, just in case, frowning at the white-flutter of the drapes on the open window.

“Could you imagine Hotch trying to explain this?” she said instead of any of that, and Elle laughed. Another finger. Emily reached down, gripped her shoulder with nails that bit, and memorized the way weak light glinted from a wet mouth. “Or Re—ah— _Reid_ …” Elle smirked again. Catlike, cunning, and Emily’s gut jolted with that smirk. Tensed more. Knew her mouth was open, her eyes blank, knew she was on the cusp of that endless unravelling.

“Oh, he knows,” Elle said, and Emily swallowed hard. Coughed. Didn’t know what to say next. Knew what was coming. “After bad cases, he’d knock at my door. You know the knock. Shave and a haircut, every time, and I’d open it to him standing there sheepishly in his best damn shirt.”

“You fucked _Reid_?” Emily said, almost laughing, almost not.

“He did his share of the fucking, little minx he is,” Elle murmured, her voice a low hum. Her fingers hooked, found the tension, and she didn’t stop Emily from bucking this time. Just waited for the surge to subside and pressed her mouth to the taut line of skin from hip to stomach. Kissed like a promise. “Better?”

Emily shuttered her eyes, tasted the whiskey again. Nodded. Opened them and slid to the floor, Elle scuttling back. Emily smiled, shaking away the image of Reid and this woman tangled together in shared insecurity. That was something to ponder later.

“Your turn,” she said, still shaking, and ignored the buzz of her cell as she found the other woman’s mouth. _I don’t kiss and fuck_ , Elle had joked as they’d stumbled into the room. _Don’t expect tender lesbian bullshit from me, agent._

Emily proved her wrong.


	5. Roll Five: Dear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Jennifer Jareau/Spencer Reid**

It was… it wasn’t perfect. But it was amazing anyway.

He wasn’t entirely sure about football, beyond the theoretical. But he tried. He cheered when the Redskins scored—he was pretty sure he did, anyway—he drank beer that was warm and a little too gluggy out of a plastic cup, and every time it felt right he held her hand. She seemed to appreciate that.

“I thought you said,” she began afterward, as he walked her slowly up the darkened front path with one hand pressed to the small of her back, “that you’d never gone a date before today?”

“I haven’t,” he said quietly, and stopped. The night around them was the kind of still where everything seemed to be holding its breath and the air was a bite too cold, a little too brisk. Not perfect, but amazing anyway. “This is my first. Did… did I do okay?”

She stopped, too. “Oh, Spence,” she said, and stepped closer. His heart skipped a little. “It was almost perfect.”

“Only almost?” he teased, looking down and to the side to hide the flush that the dark didn’t. “Aw, I’ve never not gotten full marks before…”

“That was a double negative,” she scolded, and it was unexpected enough that he looked up to laugh. A laugh he never had time to voice because she kissed him. Soft and gentle and taking up all of the space up in his brain. “And there you go. Almost full marks.”

“Almost?” he murmured, bringing his hand up to cup her jaw. On impulse, really. Maybe he knew more about this dating business than she’d given him credit for.

She took that hand in her own, her palms insanely small against his. Pulled him against her, guiding him in a swaying half-dance step towards her front door. “I don’t want to spoil you, Spence,” she said with a smile that was more Elle than her, “so don’t expect this from every first date. But… come inside?”

His heart actually stopped. His words failed him. “I haven’t…” he stammered.

“I know,” she said, and pulled him up the garden path, towards the front door, his heart hammering along with the tap of their shoes on the stones. Keys rustled and he held on tighter, palms slippery. She was as nervous as he was.

Then they were inside, in the house that was the perfect mix of composed and chaotic. More JJ than he knew how to verbalize. He noted all of this, but not consciously, toeing off his shoes without taking his eyes off of her. She did the same, gorgeously pale in the unlit hall. She offered him a drink. He accepted. The kitchen was cool and quiet, the glass slick under his fingers, and he was a wary mix of unsure and excited and worried and—

“Stop overthinking,” she murmured, standing on tiptoes to bring her mouth to his. His heart did a funny little twist and he queried that, taking that feeling and examining it even as he responded to her attentions. “This is one night, Spence. One night that changes nothing.”

Not true. He felt like it was changing something. Some innate part of himself, and it wasn’t that he knew that she was going to take him upstairs, to her bedroom. It wasn’t the sex he knew was coming. It was that it was _her_. His JJ, except not really, because JJ was her own woman and always would be. It was something deeper. Some friendship between them that was cautious and optimistic, hazed by what might be a crush. It was taking that and deepening it, widening it. Building it up with walls of trust and it wasn’t love, but it was the foundations of it.

He knew this would be a first and a last, and he was glad for both those things, because there was far too much feeling for even his brain to comprehend.

The bedroom, when they reached it, was lit only by the moon through the window. He asked her to leave the lights off, shy still. She complied, but looked pained to do so. There was a horrible, awkward beat where he stared at her as she slid her dress from her shoulders and let it pool around her feet like water, bra and underwear following. She stood naked, he fully dressed with clumsy hands and wary thoughts, and he didn’t know what to do.

Wordless, she helped. Coaxed his shirt from him, his pants. Found his mouth and kissed him until he forgot to worry. The bed dipped below them, rolling them both to the middle where he imagined her tossing and turning alone and waiting for a midnight phone call. The towel she’d laid down to spare the sheet bunched under him and he smoothed it out, anxious.

“Take it slow,” she whispered into his ear, nipping, and he noted her preferences in foreplay and mimicked them to see how she’d respond. Positively, thankfully. “I need to go slow, Spence. Otherwise I won’t be ready.”

“Slow is good,” he breathed, despite a tense kind of build suggesting slow was the opposite of what he’d manage tonight. “Slow is… yes. Where can I touch you?”

“Anywhere,” was the reply, gasped, because he was touching her by then, following her advice. His fingers caught once between her legs, a hint too rough, and she hissed and showed him how to angle them. Slow, careful. This was a moment he knew was dear to them both.

When she murmured _now_ , and arched against his over-warm body, he stalled again. Panicked a little. Got caught up in his too-big brain, lost the moment. Knew he was softening slightly against her leg, knew his eyes were wide and worried. Fingers curled around him, coaxing again, and he buried his mouth against her shoulder and just _breathed_. Her next _now_ was a query, gentle and loving, and he nodded. Used his teeth to nip open the packet of the prophylactic and watched with interest as she rolled it on, her small hands an odd, almost obscene sight on him.

And those small hands stayed around him as she eased down over him, carefully. Slow. He was thankful for the sluggish speed of their coupling, determined to remember it all. Slow, until it wasn’t, and neither was surprised when he came first—too soon—with a whimper and a snap of her name. She caught her name with her mouth over his, and then showed him how to help ease her over the edge he’d gleefully flung himself over.

_Stay the night,_ she offered sleepily, padding back to the darkened bedroom after vanishing to clean up and lobbing a warm washcloth at him. He daubed at himself, shy, and agreed.

They slept tangled together and promised never to tell anyone about this.

But he never forgot.


	6. Roll Six: Godly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **David Rossi & Jason Gideon**

It started with a teddy bear and a glass of budget vodka. Not even mixed. Just straight vodka; the kind that burned on the way in and out, and Rossi gagged on it but drunk it anyway. The teddy mocked him from the wall opposite, its photo pinned into the drywall surrounded by a cruel medley of crime scene visages. The child’s body, paired with the bear, wasn’t half as horrible. Or maybe the problem was that it was impossibly _more_ horrible, so much so that Rossi couldn’t actually comprehend just _how_ awful and he was left staring that fucking teddy and its beady button eyes.

“What did you see, Mr. Bear?” he asked, aware he was slurring a little, aware the burning had eased. Aware he was drinking in the basement of the FBI where they’d tucked him away to rot, confident that his ‘profiling’ should be regulated to the same bullshit file room as where they’d throw a guy named Mulder. Despite him and Jason proving over and over and _over_ that there was _something_ in what they were doing. That this was _something_.

The bear glared.

Rossi poured another glass and shoved it across the desk at him, the glass scraping painfully across the wood. _For you_ , he thought of saying to the bear, and then he imagined the bear grimacing as he drunk it, and then he laughed until his eyes burned too and thought that maybe they were going to lose this one. And lose more with it.

The door creaked and, _thump_ , knocked against the wall. Rossi closed his eyes and let his chin lean against the rim of his glass, digging into his jaw. _Damn. Damn damn blast damn bother fuck._

“Jason, hello,” he said into the glass. “I’m working hard, hardly working, fucking up. Always, fucking up.”

“You didn’t fuck up,” Jason said. Rossi leaned back, hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat and laughed at the pock-marked ceiling and his pock-marked life and that asshole of a teddy bear staring right at him. “The locals fucked up. Why are you drinking from two glasses?”

“That’s the teddy bear’s,” Rossi explained with a _duh_ expression. “Bastard. Hope he chokes on it. Bastard. _Bastard._ ”

Jason stepped in, closing the door. Walked across quietly to slide his ass onto the desk, peering down at Rossi like a school-teacher or some sort of predatory bird. “Why are you angry at the teddy bear?” he asked, curious, and Rossi was suddenly fucking _furious_ with no idea why.

“I’m _not_ mad at the fucking teddy!” he roared, rearing up to his feet. And then saying, “Woah,” and slithering back down because shit, fuck, there was the vodka. He missed the chair, somehow, and lay on the ground staring up at Jason as he peered down at him. “I’m not… mad at the teddy… are you a pious man, Jason?”

“Hardly,” Jason replied with a wide-eyed blink. “It’s not exactly easy to be a godly man in this kind of work. Are you projecting your own sense of failure surrounding this case onto the bear?”

Rossi groaned. Jason _really_ needed to learn people—not people like how they knew people for their work, but people like the people he was himself around. When he let the mask of Agent Gideon slide away and Jason shine through—peculiar, odd, off-putting, over-intelligent Jason Gideon. There’d never be anyone else like him, of that Rossi was sure. “Don’t profile me, cardigan-boy. I’m not projecting anything onto anyone nor am I sad nor am I feeling anything other than drunk and stupid and you’re stupid, you dress stupid, have I ever told you that?”

Another blink. “How many of those have you had?”

Rossi counted. Recounted. Halved the number, just in case. “Five,” he said confidently, and tried to heave himself up using the chair, which dodged. “And one for the bear.”

“Yes.” Jason leaned forward, elbow on the desk and hand on his chin. “Hmm. It would be a lesson for me to leave you down there.”

“But that’s not very godly of you, Jasey,” Rossi whined, turning his head to scuff his cheek on the ratty carpet. “I’d likely drown in my own sadness. I _am_ sad, right now. So very, very sad.”

A sigh, and Jason slipped down to haul him up by his arms. Rossi grinned blearily at him, taking liberal advantage of his support. “Thought you weren’t feeling anything,” Jason grumbled, scooping his jacket up.

“I lied,” Rossi replied mournfully. “Can I stay with you tonight? Because I also lied about how many drinks I’ve had, and I’m worried the bear is going to seek revenge in the night.”

Jason’s arm slipped tighter around his waist. “Sure,” he said finally, and Rossi let his head slip down. Forever grateful for his weird, strange, odd friend. “If you promise to never call me Jasey again.”


	7. Roll Seven: Learned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Aaron Hotchner & Henry LaMontagne**

It wasn’t often that Hotch had a weekend home to spend with his son, and it was even less often that he had a guest for that timeframe. But JJ was harried, strained with her mother’s illness, and Will hadn’t wanted Henry to be subjected to the long drive and the even longer wait at the hospital at the end of it all.

So, there was a foam mattress made up neatly on the floor next to Jack’s bed, a backpack labelled _H. R. LaMontagne_ in black marker perched cheerfully at the end, and the backyard was loud with the sound of two boys shrieking as they gleefully attacked each other with squirt guns and the garden hose. Hotch watched them through the kitchen window as he picked through some leftover paperwork he’d brought home, reading glasses on his nose, and wondered if JJ ever missed this as much as he did.

The evening was hectic enough that he didn’t have time to ponder it, as it turned out the only thing more chaotic than dealing with a hyperactively polite seven-year-old was also dealing with his equally as polite and hyperactive six-year-old buddy at the same time. There was dinner—Jack had watched a movie about cows having best friends the week before at school and had to be soothed that the cow in his sausages had assuredly _not_ had a best friend and had, in fact, died a happy, peaceful death, while Henry was suspicious of any peas that touched his carrots and had to be shown how to separate the colours into different segments of plate. Then baths, pyjamas, bed, water, bed again, bed once more when he realized the boys were trying to see who could sneak the furthest out of the bedroom without being caught…

His own bed was welcoming, and he sunk into it gratefully. Curled on his side, ears attuned to shrill calls of _Dad_ or _Mr. Aaron_ from through the barely open door, and let his eyes drift slowly over the pages of the book Prentiss had loaned him to read, the black typeface blurring in the warm light from the lamp. He blinked and the words slipped, blinked again and the room slipped, blinked one final time and drifted…

The shrill call didn’t come. He started awake with a _guh_ and found two huge, blue, glazed eyes staring at him from a swollen-red face. Blonde hair matted down against sticky skin, Henry pressed small palms to his wobbling mouth and made a gulping kind of choked moan that had Hotch launching out of the bed to scoop the boy up onto his lap for a humid, flushed kind of cuddle.

“Woah, woah,” he murmured softly, rocking back and forth like it was Jack in his lap. It was such a vivid familiarity for a moment that he almost expected to turn and find Haley blinking sleepily at him from the yellow-lit sheets, her hair tumbled around her eyes. “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

Henry was a hiccupping, panicking mess. Hotch wasn’t entirely sure the poor kid was awake enough to even know who was holding him or where he was, his face a familiar mix of confused and sleepy and frightened all at once.

“Mommy’s gone,” Henry whimpered, expression clearing slightly as he shook himself conscious. “Mommy’s gone, she’s not here, where’s Daddy?” It trailed off into rattling sobs that shook the small frame as it seemed to hit him that neither of his parents were there. “They’ve gone. They’ve gone and they’re not back, I dreamed they won’t come back!”

“Oh no, bud, oh no, no,” Hotch said, shifting the weight on his lap so he wasn’t unevenly listing to the side anymore. “Your dad and mom are off seeing Grandma—they’re not so far away, they’ll be back as soon as you sleep.”

“Don’t wanna sleep,” Henry mumbled, shoving his face against Hotch’s chest and leaving a damp trail of snot and tears across his shirt. “Want Mommy. What if bad guys got her…” Hotch swallowed.

Exactly like Jack.

“You know, your parents have always come home so far,” he said instead. Henry tipped his head back to peer up at him, suspicious, and Hotch took the chance to wipe strands of hair away from sore looking eyes. “Every time. They always come home, no matter what. No bad guys have stopped them so far. That’s a pretty good track record, I think.”

“Maybe,” Henry said uncertainly. “But we can’t be _sure_.”

Hotch considered that for a second, and then glanced to his phone. Tipping back, Henry scurried to cling on, he grabbed his cell and tapped out a quick message. _Are you awake? We’re having nightmares._

“Do you have to go to work?” Henry asked solemnly, glaring at the cell. “It’s okay. I can look after Jack, promise.”

His cell buzzed before he could answer. “No work,” he said, scooting backwards to brace his back against the headboard and prop the phone on his knee, screen forward. Henry peered at it curiously. “It’s for you, Henry.” He answered the call with a swipe, JJ’s tired face filling the screen.

_Henry, baby, hello,_ she said, and Hotch smiled and let the excited boy babble into the mouthpiece. Gone were the tears, the only signs remaining the murky red around his eyes and the sweaty clumps of hair sticking about. _Of course we’re coming back, love. Of course._

A scuff at the door. Hotch looked up to see a sleepy-scared face peering around the frame, fingers white on the wood. He jerked his head, _come here_ , and Jack scampered and slid into the bed in one smooth, practised movement, huddling against Hotch’s side. Hotch slung an arm around him, hugged him close, and waited for JJ to soothe her son.

“Aaron,” said a voice, and he startled from a half-doze to find JJ smiling at him and Henry drooping across his knee. “Sorry about that.”

“S’okay,” he murmured, rubbing his eyes with the hand not holding the cell. Jack made a mewling sound in his sleep, his head on his dad’s chest. Henry blinked at them both, head nodding. “How’s he feeling?”

“Tired, I think, but okay,” JJ reassured them. “You’re going to go to bed now, right Henry? And when you wake up, we’ll be home.”

Henry nodded slowly, eyes on Jack. “Can I stay with Jack?” he asked suddenly, expression worried. “He might worry if I’m gone and he’s here when he wakes up.”

Hotch looked to JJ, who nodded. “Sure thing,” he said, inching over to let Henry slide under the covers with his friend, eyes already closing. “There’s no nightmares in here. I promise.”


	8. Roll Eight: Mellow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Jason Gideon & Tobias Hankel**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for character death.

Gideon had always considered that some of his edges had been, perhaps, _smoothed_ over by age. That maybe he’d lost some spark, some crucial ferocity, as the years had ticked unstoppably onward. _Mellowing,_ David had always threatened him. _You’ll mellow one day, Jason_. And maybe he had. Maybe that was why they’d lost this one. Maybe he’d been too weathered, too old, too aged.

They drove fast despite knowing they were too late. The wheels jolted painfully over every dip and bump. Hotch’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel, leaving sweaty fingerprints on the black surface when he shifted his hands. Prentiss sat in the back, and she said nothing.

When Jason Gideon got out of the car, he took the time to notice: the brisk spring air alive with the scent of peat moss, the whistle of a nearby woodpecker disturbed from its nap, the distant bleating of a sheep. Then he moved quietly towards the poacher’s shack, the team fanning around him.

“He’s not in here!” Morgan called out, his voice raw and shrill with hate. Gideon hovered by the door, scanning the ground outside for furrows and marks where a struggling body could have been dragged. JJ stood by the vehicles, her gun slack in her hand and blue eyes empty. Shock visible on her face. They shouldn’t have brought her. She shouldn’t be here.

He noted where heels had kicked a clod of dirt into a rough V shape. Without a word, as the team move through the shack, he followed that trail. Alone. _Too old. Too slow. Too late._

The trees were sparse, thin whispers of mist creeping around them and curling up the trucks like cats searching for a meal. It eddied as he pushed through, his feet loud on the soft dirt, and the smell of earth growing stronger. As though it beckoned him through the faceless headstones. Called out _come this way, to you grave. Follow us. Follow him._

He found him.

The shovel had been thrown carelessly down as the wielder had realized he was fighting a losing battle against the soggy dirt. Its handle lay tipped over the silent form left discarded, limp and pale in the blue moonlight. Gideon slunk forward, some part of his chest aching, some part of his mind numb, and sunk to the ground by the body without a care for how the wet oozed through his slacks and stained his knees.

There were rules about what happened next. Regulations. He ignored them because what did they matter now? Instead, he rolled the man he’d failed onto his back, wiped mud from the too-thin face and winced at how young the grubby streaks made him look. Brushed hair away from empty eyes. Leaned closer, just to check for the slightest whisper of air remaining, and murmured, _I’m sorry._

“I’m sorry,” the forest repeated, and Gideon jerked upright to find Hankel standing in front of him with his hands open at his side and shoulders slumped. He slipped his hand back to his gun, stood, aimed. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t want him dead. I _liked_ him. My father…”

“He was innocent,” Gideon snarled through frozen lips. “You don’t _kill_ the innocent. Why him?”

Hankel tilted his head, his own gun shifting in his hands. “No one is innocent,” he responded blankly. Behind him, the white mist glinted. Shifted. Billowed. Something approached. “Not even him.”

“There are six things which the Lord hates: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,” Gideon quoted, watching that curling white. “It is not on you to decree who is innocent and who is not.”

“Why are you so heartbroken over this singular death?” Hankel rocked back, the gun slipping between narrow fingers. “Why does he matter so much more than all the others Raphael has taken for their sins?”

Gideon looked down. Brushed his hand across a motionless chest to wipe away a smear of something dark and dirty before the others could see it. “Because we loved him, you bastard,” he breathed, seeing Hankel frown as he failed to hear the whispered words. Before shouting, “He’s armed!” and watching the white snap- _crack_ with a muzzle flash and Hankel fall.

Hotch stepped out of the darkness, walking over with his eyes huge and hurt. He kicked the gun away from Hankel’s limp hands, checked for life, shuffled forwards to do the same for their colleague. As Gideon watched his unit chief’s fingers skim over the bloodied, bruised marks on pale arms, he wondered if they could recover from this. He knew he himself wouldn’t.

He knew more had ended tonight than Spencer Reid’s life.


	9. Roll Nine: Zippy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Elle Greenaway/Grant Anderson**

She’d caught his eye before. There was just a kind of _life_ around her that was impossible to ignore. Not to mention, they were all kind of eye-catching, her whole team. Aaron Hotchner was impressively imposing. Derek Morgan was the kind of man who _demanded_ attention. Penelope Garcia was wonderful, wonderful, and Anderson always felt flustered and bright around her savage optimism. Jennifer Jareau was shy and cheerfully and oddly out of place around the kinds of cases Anderson knew they took on. Spencer Reid was… well. He was something, for sure.

And then there was Elle.

“Alright, sunshine?” she asked him every morning as she sauntered past his desk to get to the coffee pot. He always mangled his reply, spluttering something useless and incomprehensible out. She was sharp, cunning, _normal._ Delightfully normal in an office full of people who were larger than life in some way. His mother would have called her _zippy._ His grandmamma would have called her _trouble._

He’d always sort of relished trouble.

So when Agent Hotchner asked him to take her home during a gruelling case that had the look of turning personal, Anderson jumped at the chance. Heck, who wouldn’t? She looked haggard, exhausted. In the car, she mumbled something about this being unnecessary and grumbled about over-protective males, but her head lolled against the window and he had to take every turn carefully so he didn’t smack her cheek into the glass. He _wasn’t_ overprotective, but he was a _little_ protective and… well, he wouldn’t have let his sisters be alone while looking this done in, and she wasn’t his sister but…

He was beginning to get the feeling he was a slightly in over his head, a little bit sunk in hero worship, and the tiniest bit… well, chauvinistic. Perhaps.

He was never going to admit to that though. Especially not to _her_.

“Agent Greenaway,” he murmured, glancing across at her bruised looking eyes and wiry hair hanging limp in her face. “Ma’am? We’re here. We should go inside so you can rest.”

She stuttered awake, blinking rapidly. From fast asleep to sharply alert quicker than Anderson could turn the ignition to off. “No,” she snapped, cranky with exhaustion. Her voice was cutting, but it didn’t really bother him. His sisters could be like that too when they were tired, and so could he. “I don’t need a babysitter, sunshine. Go back to work, I’m fine.”

She swung around and out of the car without so much as a thank you, weaving slightly on the path. He froze. Unsure of his welcome here, but absolutely sure that Agent Hotchner would _kill_ him if he showed back up at the academy without her, or at the very least write him up. The radio hummed softly with the pop music he’d turned down so she could rest on the drive, and he fiddled with it as she vanished inside her front door and let it bang shut behind her.

Nope. Chauvinistic or not, he was doing his damn job, and it was _not_ because her smile made his heart do a strange little twist of interest or because he was intensely curious about her. Nope. After all, this was probably going to get him shot. And he wasn’t the kind of guy to risk getting shot for a gal, even one as delightfully interesting as Elle.

He slipped out of the car, locking it behind him, and started reluctantly up her front path. She probably wouldn’t let him in. She probably was going to kick his arse for this. She probably—

One foot on the polished wooden porch when his ears split along with the distinctive _pop-crack_ of a handgun report from inside the house. His mind blanked, his body moving without him. He’d never broken a door down. He was a desk agent. He wasn’t even qualified to carry.

First instinct was to run. He tamped that down fast, sprinting for the door, hearing himself shout _Elle_ from some deep, forgotten part of his chest that turned the word raw and deep and primal. It was a roar more than a shout, and something inside the house tipped and clattered along with the impact of him battering the door with his fist, his other hand wrestling with the locked handle.

He turned on his heel, leaping from the porch with twin shooting pains in his ankles as he landed at a run. Cell in his hand, it was already dialling Hotchner’s number before he was consciously aware of making the decision to call him. Finding open windows down the side of her house, distantly he heard himself calmly— _impossibly_ calmly since his heart was hammering and his brain was shutting down and his hands were wet with sweat—saying, _shots fired inside her home, Agent Greenaway’s condition is unknown,_ and vaguely adding on the end that he was entering the premises without really registering Hotchner’s sharp, _stay where you are._

Call disconnected, he slung it back in his pocket and jumped, heaving himself up through the window with his arms screaming in pain and his boots scrabbling and battering against the wall of her home. It was open. Why had she left her window open? Thinking about that because thinking about that meant he wasn’t thinking about the fact that for a single, lingering moment his head and torso were uncovered and vulnerable.

Then he was tumbling through, rolling from a windowsill onto a cushioned seat, and Elle was splayed on the ground with her eyes open and stunned staring at him, red pooling wetly into the carpet around her. And whatever blankness had crept into his mind previously vanished, replaced with the clear knowledge he was all she had right now. That this was it. His actions right now _mattered_.

He kneeled next to her, knees squishing wetly into the soaked carpet, stripping his jacket. Finding the accusing red hole in her stomach and pressing down on it. _Keep talking to her_ , whispered the long-forgotten voice of some distant volunteer teaching him first aid, for some reason replacing the much more up-to-date classes he’d gone to recently. Sirens wailed nearby, getting closer.

He really fucking hoped the guy who’d done this was gone, because as soon as he applied pressure and looked to her face, he couldn’t look away. Panic and determination warred. Her gaze was dimming, the sharpness failing, her mouth moving soundlessly. He curled his fingers into the jacket, leaning in closer despite the open doorways nearby promising that a monster could still linger, and locked his gaze with hers.

“Don’t die,” he told her sternly. There were bloody fingerprints on her abdomen, as though the bastard had trailed his hand through the mess he’d made of her before Anderson had interrupted. “Don’t die, Elle. You don’t quit on us. Hotchner will be _really_ pissed at me if you quit on us now.”

She coughed, breathed raggedly, her hand brushing against his. He thought she was trying to shove him away before her fingers tangled through his, her grip light and growing lighter by the second as he held her life together. Her eyes blinked, shuttered, opened, sharpened. Her mouth tipped up into a hazy smile.

“Alright,” she agreed with a choked kind of laugh. “Alright, sunshine.”

Her eyes shut, but he didn’t let go. He stayed with her.

And she lived.


	10. Roll Ten: Deranged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Spencer Reid & Peter Lewis**

“Dr. Reagan?” Reid stepped carefully into the darkened house, his senses alive with the probabilities of what he could find inside. “Dr. Reagan? It’s Dr. Reid with the FBI—you’re in danger. I need you to come with me, to safety. Hello?”

Silence answered. Silence, and the dark.

Reid hated the dark. He shivered, gripped his gun tighter in hands that were slippery and tense, and slowly advanced into that waiting black.

“Dr. Reid?” called a voice. Reid turned towards the place that voice was sounding from on impulse, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. The voice was… vacant. Wrong. Female. “I received Agent Rossi’s message. I’m in the study.”

He paced forward, feet angled to keep his body as small as possible as he walked into the barely lit room, narrowing his eyes against the glare from the lamp behind the doctor’s body. Standing mutely, smiling oddly, she watched him enter.

He noted the knife a second too late.

“No!” he cried, leaping forward, but the knife plunged home and red sprayed. She crumpled, her body not quite masking the scuff of a boot on the rug behind him. Reid ducked and turned right into a blow that threw him down, head whirling, mouth and nose thick with—

Sage. The gas was noxious and stinging, needle-like strikes that battered his face and burned unendingly. He choked, trying to scrub his mouth free with hands that weren’t holding his gun anymore, feeling the world dip and cough and try to heave him away. The disorientation was immediate, terrifying, and completely impossible to defend against.

He blinked and the room blinked with him. Blinked again and giddied sideways, hands skittering on the rug that pulled away from his jittering fingers. A hand touched his shoulder, steadying him, and every part of him turned and yearned to that touch, that fixed point of contact. Unwillingly, he looked. Found a mouth and two eyes and nothing familiar. He tried to strike at it and felt the air push back at him, his limbs heavy and his body no longer his own. Fear hit and it was paralysing.

_Gun. Where’s my gun, my phone, Hotch HotchHotchhelppleasehelp—_

“You can’t move,” the mouth said to him, and his body stilled without his consent. “Tell me what you’re feeling, Dr. Reid.” His mouth stammered, yelped. His voice thin. Was his phone ringing, chattering back? He couldn’t tell. He looked at it and the phone stopped, going black. Maybe it had never rung.

“Perceptual anomalies,” he said, shuddering as the grasping dark clawed at the edge of the room. He’d scuttled back, at some point, away from the other mouth, and his hands and hip were sunk into a carpet of wet red. He studied his fingers, bloodied fingers. Was it his? Someone else’s?

His heart skipped, galloped, dropped heavily into the damp below and forgot how to thump along.

Did he do this?

“Hallucinations,” he whispered to the accusing red on his fingers. “Loss of context as to what is reality and what is a product of the stimulant psychosis.”

The mouth approached, rearranged itself into curious eyes as it crouched in front. Long clawed fingers reached for his hands and he squeaked and tried to yank them away. Where they touched the blood, it smeared and left his fingers cold. “This isn’t a hallucination, Dr. Reid,” said Scratch, his mouth a void. Sage was strong and Reid coughed and sucked it in again, head thumping, eyes aching, body still. “This is real. You know this is real. Whose blood is this?”

Reid looked at the blood again, curling towards it. Around it. Hiding from it. “Help me, Hotch, please,” he thought or whispered or hoped.

“What are you feeling?” snarled Scratch again. “Whose blood is that? Turn around.”

Reid shook his head _no no_. “Changes in thought, emotion, and consciousness,” he mumbled. “I’m panicking. Scared. Symptoms of shock. Nothing is real.”

“That is.” The fingers jabbed. Reid’s neck itched. Someone was behind him. He scratched at his hands, rubbing rubbing rubbing and maybe the blood was his. “Turn around. I said _turn around_.”

Reid turned. Looked down. Swallowed.

“Dissociation of sensory input causing derealization, the perception of the outside world as being dream-like or unreal,” he mewled, shaking shaking. Helpless. _Help me._ “I’m dissociating. Depersonalization. Detaching from my body; feeling unreal; feeling able to observe my actions but not actively take control. This is the drug—”

_This is you_.

“—nothing I’m feeling is real or viable—”

_You did this._

“—and you won’t _control_ me—”

_But I already am._

Reid swallowed again, tasted sage, and looked away from the bloodied body of Aaron Hotchner laying broken and twisted behind him. Then looked back. Examined. Profiled. “He put up a fight. Assailant was approximately the same size as him, but physically weaker. He… he only has defensive wounds. No… no offensive…”

_Why._

He slipped his fingers over the bloody streaks marring his friend’s face. Stood up and stepped back, reeling. “Because he didn’t want to hurt me,” he breathed, and the knife was in his hands. He stepped again, into more wet, more red, and looked down to JJ, who would never look back again.

_Oops. She couldn’t hurt you either. Mistake._

He ran. Fell. Smashed his knee into the corner of a coffee table, and skittered back on limbs that crabbed around him and forgot how to move, to flee, limbs that wanted him to see the blood surrounding him. _You did this youdidthis you always knew you were capable of **madness**._

Emily. She stepped into the room, her eyes sad. _I always knew you’d snap one day,_ she said sadly, but she put her gun away. _Oh, Spence. But like this? Why would you do this? To Aaron? To Dave? To me?_

“Don’t,” he begged her. “Don’t come over here.” She ignored him, walking towards him with her hands held out to him. Begging. Pleading him to be okay. “Stop. No no no not Emily not EmilynotEmily…”

The knife laughed and laughed and he thought it might be him who was grossly pleased.

Arms around him. Emily hugged him close and he hugged her back, tucking his mouth and nose against the curve of her neck and hiccupping between laughs as he sobbed. Broken, heaving, wheezing sobs that tore and whistled and he couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t stop from crying, from breaking, from the mind he’d always been so fucking _proud_ of shattering like a mug swept carelessly from a table.

He felt the knife stutter across her ribs as it slipped between them. Felt the easy slide. Felt the pressure. Screamed as the hilt shuddered and pressed against her skin and she took one wet sounding breath and sagged into his grip. He fell with her and hoped he’d die instead.

He thought he might have thrown the knife. He thought he might have thrown up.

All he knew for sure was he was on his knees cradling her against his chest and she was bleeding bleeding and he’d done it.

_Don’t blame you,_ she said. Smiling. Her lovely, lovely smile, and he didn’t know what to say—

She died.

No fanfare. There one minute, gone the next, and he curled around her and used her silent chest to muffle his screams.

_Get up. They’re coming. Stop them._

But he refused. He stayed with her until they came and he wished he’d die. Stayed with her until a hand touched his shoulder— _oh my god, Spence, Hotch he’s bleeding—_ and someone else ran past— _get the fucking medic in here—_ and still she was gone.

Looking up at the ghost of Aaron Hotchner, he managed a broken, “I killed her,” and then he managed nothing at all.

The darkness was welcoming this time, and he wasn’t scared at all.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
